The Whiteboard

I'm an entrepreneur and founder of Northside Media Group. I co-founded the Northside Festival and the NExT Expo: a celebration of the Brooklyn innovation and creative communities. My three kids are collectively two years apart and my wife is a saint. These are my thoughts about business and life as both continue to surprise and amaze me constantly.

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The Listicle

So much about the listicles out there and pretty much consensus on the power of the format. Been thinking a bit beyond that and what listicles are best at conveying... Settled on: interests. How we frame our passions.

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Crazy Time

Super exciting times right now with Northside Festival just a few weeks away. NY Magazine just did a great profile (check it out here). However, as I'm knee deep in programming the event, and locking down all the relationships we need to continue making this event successful, I'm struck by how incredibly human business is.

It might feel that with so many things coming online changing our behavior, and with the sudden dominance of  metrics and big data, that suddenly the art of business is nothing more than automated analysis. I guess I'm just struck how far that is from the truth. How companies like Tough Mudder can grow to a 130 million behemoth in less than 5 years just because they gave their community a voice, an attitude, and the tools to communicate.

On an even more macro scale when reading about risk metrics in R+R's study, or in the macro economics of boom bust it's all gauging and tampering with human emotion and expectation. 

Call me old fashioned but it make the data crunching and the metrics slog so much more interesting in fun knowing that all along the way there are going to be unique human decisions that give that information import.

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The Politics of EVERYTHING

I spoke to the City Council of Cambridge yesterday about ways to help build the creative economy. I actually love these things. For people who don't spend a lot of time involved in ACTUAL politics, it would be surprising to see the candor and openness of these meetings. Real policy comes out of them and the players are generally very well intentioned. I'm not naive and I certainly recognize that our system gets corrupted, often, along the way. I will say that given the impact, the amount of $$, the number of people impacted, etc. I am almost always struck by the power a passionate and articulate individual can have in impacting local policy.

Now to what I was talking about. How to you actively build a creative economy? The questions I was getting related to Brooklyn and... well... how that happened. 

The thing I wanted to emphasize is that there is a community (lowercase) and a COMMUNITY (all caps). I'll use NYC's innovation community pre-2011 as an example. There were plenty of way for entrepreneurs and technologists to converge, and there were companies being built in NYC, etc. There was a community, all you had to do was go to NYTM to see it. Then suddenly Roosevelt Island was announced and that community became a COMMUNITY. 

The only difference I can distinguish is enthusiasm from the capital community. With top notch engineers coming online over the next decade, the NYC innovation community is more likely to scale into large companies in NYC. 

The point I hoped to make to this group is that you can listen to the needs of the creative community to build a lowercase creative economy, but you need to listen to the needs of the capital community if you want to build a COMMUNITY in caps (no pun intended).

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Mary Oliver-- the unsung poet of entrepreneurs

Mary Oliver is a lyrical poet who writes poetry about life and humanity that relies almost exclusively on the natural world. Apart from herself there is rarely (if ever) another person that occupies space in her poems. 

For this reason there are some rare times where I feel that she is uniquely suited to what I still believe, in my own experience, is the most singular and memorable characteristic of being a "founder," loneliness. There are so many other things going on, but the sensation of doing something important that touches many lives for good (and bad) alone and on your own is inevitable... because you are!

For me, this poem, specifically, evokes the early years of The L Magazine and Northside Media Group. A time when I felt so ill prepared to run a company and so confused with the best way to adapt to the constant turbulence of growth and failure.

The Journey

One day you finally knew 

what you had to do, and began, 

though the voices around you 

kept shouting 

their bad advice—

though the whole house 

began to tremble 

and you felt the old tug 

at your ankles. 

"Mend my life!" 

each voice cried. 

But you didn't stop. 

You knew what you had to do, 

though the wind pried 

with its stiff fingers 

at the very foundations, 

though their melancholy 

was terrible. 

It was already late 

enough, and a wild night, 

and the road full of fallen 

branches and stones. 

But little by little, 

as you left their voices behind, 

the stars began to burn 

through the sheets of clouds, 

and there was a new voice 

which you slowly 

recognized as your own, 

that kept you company 

as you strode deeper and deeper 

into the world 

determined to do 

the only thing you could do—

determined to save

the only life you could save.

- Mary Oliver

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Government is OFTEN Good

In an ironic twist. The day after I wrote my post about my excitement for Kalanick / Yassky talk at NExT about innovation and regulation I had a government whammy hit Northside. Over the 8 days of the event this year we'll have more than 80,000 people coming to different aspects of the festival as we celebrate the innovation and creative communities of Brooklyn, with the majority coming over the June 15 + 16 weekend.

When I suddenly received a spate of emails last week from local civic and elected leaders I was worried... The MTA decided, without consulting community boards, local leaders, or ANYONE, that June 15 + 16 was a great time to close service to Brooklyn for service updates to the L train. 

My apologies to neighbors who might have heard a barbarically yawping "wtf" ring through Wellesley. 

Within an hour of this announcement local businesses who rely on the increase in local business during Northside (and on another weekend they had announced), civic groups, and a remarkable team of local elected officials led by Daniel Squadron, Joe Lentol, Stephen Levin, and Marty Markowitz created a coherent and unified approach to the MTA. They drafted a letter, advised patience to those of us impacted by this, and assuaged us with remarkable communication. 

... then something amazing happened. In less than 48 hours they fixed the problem. The dates were changed. If you'll excuse a slight reach... guided by great elected officials, the regulation (MTA changes to the L train schedule) that threatened to strangle valuable innovation (the emergence of Northside Festival as a major event and boost to the local economy) was changed to everyone's benefit. 

So now a final point. There is a mayoral election coming up in NYC. Learn about the candidates and VOTE in the primary. That is where this election is almost entirely decided and the next Mayor will impact everyone in NYC... particularly anyone interested in entrepreneurship.

Just to reiterate a huge thanks to State Senator Daniel Squadron, NY Assemblyman Joseph Lentol, Council Member Stephen Levin, Borough Prez Marty Markowitz, and everyone else who participated in this rapid response.

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Exceptional Service

In the rapid pace of business it's easy to forget one thing: nothing insures a long term professional relationship like exceptional customer service. When the commodity you trade in is relationships it's extra easy to forget that-- particularly when you're the one sitting on the capital, or the contract, or the power. 

As someone who has missed his fair share of meetings or prioritized one meeting over another and simply not communicated effectively to the less important party (I should say less apparently important since one never knows when the dynamics might change).

That brings me to Phin Barnes, a VC with First Round. Phin has spoken at Northside in the past and been a great advocate for the event. This year he's gone above and beyond in making introductions. To my surprise I suddenly got a questionnaire from Phin asking to grade his performance. Performance at what? I mean we've just been building a casual, professional relationship.

Then it hit me. Bingo! That's the most important commodity we trade in-- the way we treat people. What a very un-ironic and systemic approach to performance from this sneaker freaker VC. Finishing the questionnaire I was directed to a blog post that articulates his approach to the UX of VC. Is it any wonder that Phin received top grades from me across the board? Not when every call he makes he recognizes that he will be accountable. 

Check out the post below. While I don't yet have a questionnaire that I can send off to people I've spoken with to evaluate my performance.... don't be surprised if I do soon.

I'd urge anyone stumbling across this page to check out his post here.

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At last

As my life and career take me in exciting and unexpected places I'm excited to get my periodic thoughts down in one place! Right now it's all Northside Festival all the time. Just announced the NExT Conference initial schedule and I couldn't be more excited and proud about how it's grown. 

I'm particularly interested in two topics that are repeatedly brought up by the innovators I'm working with. The difficulty of innovating within a community that needs regulation. How does regulation keep up with the speed of innovation. Looking at the difference of DC and NYC dealing with Uber, etc. This subject is specifically relevant to me as I see it on a much more local and granular level as we have grown a new event in Brooklyn to a massive scale. Cutting through issues with the Parks Dept, the DOT, etc. These agencies have tried to keep up and encourage the growth of Northside but there are still times where the regulations bump into the growth of the event.

The other area that just fascinates me to no end is the systemic impact of arcane patent laws and the strangle hold IP can have on innovation. More on both these topics later. Let's see if I know how to get this post up.